Exhibition Runs: June 13 – July 27, 2024
Gallery Hours:
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays: 10a – 3p
Reception, Awards & Artist Talk: Saturday, June 22, 5p – 7p
We invite you to join us for an exhibition reception, awards reception and artist talks at Harwood Art Center on Saturday, June 22, 2024 with artist talks starting at 5:00pm. This event is free and open to all ages.
Each year in SURFACE, one artist receives the Harwood Art Center Solo Exhibition Award, presented for artistic excellence, originality of vision and dedication to practice. The selected artist works for a year with support from Harwood staff to make a body of work to exhibit during the following summer. In SURFACE 2023, Zuyva Sevilla received the Solo Exhibition Award and, this year, will be showcasing his new work in the Front Gallery.
ASSEMBLIES
Assemblies explores light as both an active process and a malleable medium, pivotal in molding our experiences. It is beyond natural phenomenon, acting as the primary system for visible perception and a conduit between dimensions that influences our awareness of time. This exhibition leverages simulation as a gateway to potential realities, presenting “Simulated Light Assemblies” where simulated light-beams, influenced by the relationship between gravity and light, allow precise control and pattern exploration through variable oscillations. The resulting moiré effects form patterns of overlap and interference, illustrating the complex interplay of light. Extending these digital explorations, “Corporeal Light Assemblies” transition these light patterns into tangible spaces, inviting viewers to experience the ephemeral and corporeal impacts of light.
“My work investigates the essential structure of existence and our perception of the environment. Combining sculpture, video, and digital media, I reinterpret universal chaos and address energy consumption issues. This includes the paradox of discussing energy in my creations while consuming and possibly wasting it, offering an auto-didactic exploration through experimental self-study.
“My sculptures dissect light and heat movements in site-specific installations using industrial materials and repurposed tools, enhanced by physical computing and digital fabrication to explore energy transformation. Meanwhile, my digital work employs computer simulations to control and understand fundamental units, allowing for new experimental beginnings.
“My work reflects on ‘waste’ energy, particularly heat, as a byproduct of imperfect systems, whether mechanical, electronic, or biological. Installations create choreographies of energy diffusion, meditating on heat dispersion and light travel, the one-way flow of time, and its subtle impacts on our existence.”
About Zuyva
Zuyva Sevilla (Mexican-American, b.1996) is a semi-sentient collection of atoms feebly trying to understand everything around them. As a new-media sculpture artist, his work aims to compose, collect and culminate in an interpretation for the inherent chaos of the universe, inspired by everything from the proto-scientific to the metaphysical, and mainly dealing with the transfer of energy as it constantly happens around us. Sevilla recently showed with AURORA in Dallas, Currents New Media in Santa Fe, and InterAccess in Toronto. He was named one of Southwest Contemporary’s 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now in 2023.
About Surface
SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico is dedicated to cultivating the creative and professional growth of artistic talents and to expanding their visibility and viability in our community. Each year Harwood Art Center invites emerging artists from around New Mexico to submit works for consideration in SURFACE. SURFACE artists are eligible for a solo gallery exhibition award and all receive a special honorarium for their participation.
SURFACE enjoys a six-week exhibition in Harwood Art Center’s Hall Gallery throughout June and July. SURFACE artists also participate in a private day-long professional development workshop. Workshop sessions are led by professional artists, gallerists, public relations / communications specialists and local media, and focus on refining artist statements / written materials, developing a web and communications presence, audience and collector cultivation, as well as a group walkthrough and critique of the exhibition.
Surface Professional Development Workshop & Alumni Circle Reception
We have an amazing network of program alumni and panelists who have served in the workshop in years past, and we will work with them to adapt content and dialogue with the recognition that there are not yet experts and best practices for this current landscape, that we are treating SURFACE as a collaborative laboratory to experiment and explore them, and that we can all benefit from a circle of support and camaraderie.
Surface Awards
Artists juried into the exhibition are eligible to win endowed cash awards. We will also distribute aditional microgrants ($250) to each participating artists with help fro the City of Albuquerque’s Urban Enhancement Trust Fund. These microgrants will support each participant in acquisition of new tools, trainings, or subscriptions that could facilitate visibility and viability in this era of distance.